The water industry uses a significant amount of energy and accounts for nearly one per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the UK.

Southern Water measures its carbon emissions in two ways:

*Operational Carbon – the emissions from our daily operations to treat and recycle water and wastewater and pump it to customers’ taps and treatment works.

*Embodied Carbon – the emissions from materials, manufacture, transport and the construction of works, pumping stations and pipe work.

Between 2005 and 2010, Southern Water invested £1.6 billion in improvements to its operations and assets across Sussex, Kent, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. We intend to invest a further £1.7 billion between 2010 and 2015.

We have to continually invest in new processes and infrastructure to meet stricter water quality standards introduced by the European Union.

However, these often require energy intensive treatment processes.

The challenge for the water industry is to meet the water quality standards while continually striving to mitigate the resulting increase in our carbon emissions.